RUTH HALE, 1887-1934

Ruth Hale, a journalist and founder of the Lucy Stone League, was born in 1886 in Rogersville, Hawkins County Tennessee, to Richard Hale and Annie Riley Hale. She attended Hollins Institute in Roanoke, Virginia, and Drexel Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. She married Heywood Campbell Broun, a newspaper columnist, on June 6, 1917 and their son was born on March 10, 1918. Ruth Hale and Heywood Broun were divorced on November 17, 1933 in Nogales, Mexico.

Ruth Hale began her career as a journalist with the Hearst Bureau, in Washington D.C. when she was eighteen. She was subsequently a drama critic and sports writer for The Philadelphia Public Ledger, correspondent for the Paris edition of The Chicago Tribune during World War I, on the editorial staff of Equal Rights, drama critic for Vogue and Vanity Fair, and a reporter for other newspapers in Washington, Philadelphia, and New York. In addition, she dramatized Elinor Wylie's novel, The Venetian Glass Nephew .

Ruth Hale founded the Lucy Stone League on May 18, 1921. The League's purpose was to promote "the idea that its women are integers and not halves," specifically by encouraging women to keep their maiden names upon marriage and offering to help them with resultant problems.

From May 1925 until early 1933, Ruth Hale spent most of her time on a farm in Connecticut that she called Sabine Farm. In 1933 she returned to New York City and to Heywood Broun for a short time. She died on September 18, 1934.

For additional material on Ruth Hale and the Lucy Stone League see Biography File, Organization File, and the Marjorie White Papers, MC 184, v.92.